1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of computer networks and more specifically to computer networks including optical communication couplings.
2. Description of the Background Art
While networks are becoming increasingly reliable, a device fault may nevertheless occur at various times during an ongoing user interaction, causing at least a portion of the network to re-configure. As a result, data may be delayed, un-transmitted or lost entirely, adversely affecting the quality of the user interaction. Most re-configuration mechanisms, for example, include each affected network device selecting an active branch for causing the affected network portion to converge on a loop-less configuration. It will be appreciated that such selection takes a finite amount of time to complete, after which modern networks may re-transmit information that is determined to have been dropped due to the fault.
Until very recently, it was commonly assumed that conventional network convergence mechanisms were not only sufficiently robust to provide for email, file transfers and other non-real-time transmission to which data networks were initially directed. It was further presumed that existing convergence mechanisms would be sufficient for IP telephony, video delivery, live interaction and other more modern real-time applications using more modern data or so-called hybrid networks. Unfortunately, that assumption appears highly inaccurate. One recent study, for example, determined that “unlike switches in the public telephony network which exhibit failover on the order of milliseconds . . . interdomain routers in the packet switched Internet may take tens of minutes to reach a consistent . . . network topology after a fault” (Craig Lebowitz et. Al, “Delayed Internet Routing Convergence”, Microsoft Research and the University of Michigan). Thus, while perhaps satisfactory for non-real-time applications, convergence delays may well result in unacceptable errors in more real-time applications.
In an IP telephony application conducted via a packet switching network, for example, dropped, mis-ordered, re-received, re-configured or other errors may cause delays, gaps, echo or other sources of poor quality-of-voice (QoV). To make matters more difficult, conventional mechanisms merely provide for conducting single endpoint K-factor, E-model or other determinations of low endpoint QoV, and none has heretofore considered, let alone provided for attempting to determining causes of low quality telephony or other real-time applications. The above study, while ground-breaking, merely provided for causing errors to be experimentally generated and results to be received in a controlled manner uncharacteristic of an operating network.
Accordingly, there is a need for route convergence monitoring system and method that enable one or more of the above and/or other problems of conventional mechanisms to be avoided.
These provisions together with the various ancillary provisions and features which will become apparent to those artisans possessing skill in the art as the following description proceeds are attained by devices, assemblies, systems and methods of embodiments of the present invention, various embodiments thereof being shown with reference to the accompanying drawings, by way of example only, wherein: